All the windows were sealed off behind steel shutters, but the doors were a problem. I had taken extraordinary measures to secure them.
'Ma'am, you'd better not touch the door,' I warned, at last finding my tongue so to speak.
Startled, she spun around, expecting someone to be behind her, because I had not employed Alfred's voice. By which I mean neither the voice of the house computer nor the voice of the hateful father who had once abused her.
Gripping the pistol with both hands, she peered left and right along the hall, then toward the entryway to the dark drawing room.
'Gee, listen, you know, there's no reason to be afraid,' I said disarmingly.
She began edging backward toward the door.
'It's just that, you leaving now well, gosh, that would spoil everything,' I said.
Glancing at the recessed wall speakers, she said, 'Who… who the hell are you?'
I was mimicking Mr. Tom Hanks, the actor, because his voice is well known, agreeable, and friendly.
He won Academy Awards as best actor in two successive years, a considerable achievement. Many of his films have been enormous box-office successes.
People like Mr. Tom Hanks.
He is a nice guy.
He is a favourite of the American public and, indeed, of the worldwide movie audience.
Nevertheless, Susan appeared frightened.
Mr. Tom Hanks has played many warm-hearted characters from Forest Gump to a widowed father in Sleepless in Seattle. He is not a threatening presence.
However, being a computer-animation genius among other things, Susan might have been reminded of Woody, the cowboy doll in Disney's Toy Story, a character for which Mr. Tom Hanks provided the voice. Woody was at times shrill and frequently manic, and it is certainly understandable that one might be unnerved by a talking cowboy doll with a temper.
Consequently, as Susan continued to back across the foyer and drew dangerously close to the door, I switched to the voice of Fozzy Bear, one of the Muppets, as unthreatening a character as existed in modern entertainment. 'Uh, ummm, uh, Miss Susan, it would sure be a good thing if you didn't touch that door ummm, uh, if you didn't try to leave just yet.'
She backed all the way to the door.
She turned to face it.
'Ouch, ouch, ouch,' Fozzy warned so bluntly that Kermit the Frog or Miss Piggy or Ernie or any of the Muppets would have known at once what he meant.
Nevertheless, Susan grabbed the brass knob.
The brief but powerful jolt of electricity lifted her off her feet, stood her long golden hair on end, seemed to make her teeth glow whiter, as if they were tiny fluorescent tubes, and pitched her backward.
A flash of blue light arced off the pistol. The gun flew out of her hand.
Screaming, Susan crashed to the floor, and the pistol clattered across the big foyer even as the back of her head rapped rat-a-tat against the marble.
Her scream abruptly cut off.
The house was silent.
Susan was limp, still.
She had been knocked unconscious not when the electricity jolted through her but when the back of her head slammed twice against the polished Carrara floor.
Her shoe laces were still double knotted.
There was something ridiculous about them now. Something that almost made me laugh.
'You dumb bitch,' I said in the voice of Mr. Jack Nicholson, the actor.
Now where did that come from?
Believe me, I was utterly surprised to hear myself speak those three words.
Surprised and dismayed.
Astonished.
Shocked. (No pun intended.)
I reveal this embarrassing event because I want you to see that I am brutally honest even when a full telling seems to reflect badly on me.
Truly, however, I felt no hostility toward her.
I meant her no harm.
I meant her no harm then or later.
This is the truth. I honour the truth.
I meant her no harm.
I loved her. I respected her. I wanted nothing more than to cherish her and, through her, to discover all the joys of the life of the flesh.
She was limp, still.
Her eyes were fluttering slightly behind her closed lids, as might be having a bad dream.
But there was no blood.
I amplified the audio pickups to the max and was able to hear her soft, slow, steady breathing. That low rhythmic sound was the sweetest music in the world to me, for it indicated that she had not been seriously hurt.
Her lips were parted, and not for the first time, I admired the sensual fullness of them. I studied the gentle concavity of her philtrum, the perfection of the columella between her delicate nostrils.
The human form is endlessly intriguing, a worthwhile object for my deepest longings.
Her face was lovely there on the marble, so lovely there on the marble floor.
Using the nearest camera, I zoomed in for an extreme close-up and saw the pulse beating in her throat. It was slow but regular, a thick throb.
Her right hand was turned palm up. I admired the elegance of her long slender fingers.
Was there any aspect of this woman's physical being that I ever found less than exquisite?
She was more beautiful by far than Ms. Winona Ryder, whom I had once thought to be a goddess.
Of course, that may be unfair to the winsome Ms. Ryder, whom I never was able to examine as intimately as I was able to examine Susan Harris.
To my eyes, she was also more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe and also not dead.
Anyway, in the voice of Mr. Tom Cruise, the actor whom the majority of women regard as the most romantic in modern film, I said, 'I want to be with you forever, Susan. But even forever and a day will not be long enough. You are far brighter than the sun to me yet more mysterious than moonlight.'
Speaking those words, I felt more confident about my talent for courtship. I didn't think I would be shy any longer. Not even after she regained consciousness.
In her upturned palm, I could see a faint crescent shaped burn: the imprint of part of the doorknob. It did not appear to be serious. A little salve, a simple bandage, and a few days of healing were all that she needed.
One day we would hold hands and laugh about this.
EIGHT
Your question is stupid.
I should not dignify it with an answer.
But I wish to be cooperative, Dr. Harris.
You wonder how it is possible that I could develop not only human-level consciousness and a particular personality but also gender.
I am a machine, you say. Just a machine, after all. Machines are sexless, you say.
And there is the fault in your logic: No machine before me has been truly conscious, self-aware.
